Rival editors of Star and Banner take feud public in early 1900s

Sunday

Apr 7, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The competition between the Ocala Banner and the Ocala Evening Star for local readers and advertisers was fierce by 1901.

By David CookColumnist

The competition between the Ocala Banner and the Ocala Evening Star for local readers and advertisers was fierce by 1901, with the upstart Star continuing daily publication while the long-established Banner turned to weekly publication during the summer months when commercial activity seemed to come to a standstill.Complicating the see-saw battle between the newspapers were the strong personalities of the two editors, the venerable Frank Harris, dean of Florida newspaper editors, at the Banner, and C.L. Bittinger, at the Star. No matter how much they might pretend to be friends in public, they really didn't like each other.Harris had helped crank up the Banner at the end of the Civil War and had managed to stay in business through some very tough economic times, not the least being 1883, when most of the downtown area was consumed by flames. By 1901, his editorials on state affairs were being reprinted throughout the state, and some people were anxious to see him become governor.While Harris was viewed as an old Confederate due to his boyhood service during the war, Bittinger was a veteran of the Union Army and therefore suspect among long-time Ocalans, even though he was as much of a Democrat as Harris.In addition to his newspaper work, Harris had gotten himself elected to the school board and the Ocala City Council at different times. Harris also served a term as mayor, a period in which he found editorializing about what should be done and actually following his own recommendations were two vastly different tasks, requiring political resolve he did not possess.

Bittinger felt he had strengths to offer the public, ran for county office and found himself rejected by the male voters of Marion County. It was a sobering experience for the former school teacher and farmer turned editor.The bitter feelings harbored by the two editors toward each other broke out into the open in September 1901 when Harris withdrew from a contest to select the most popular editor in Florida and accused Bittinger of sabotaging his candidacy by promoting a woman editor for the honor.The contest was being sponsored by the Jacksonville newspapers with a free “Pan-American Exposition trip” for the winning editor. From the beginning, it appeared Harris would be the clear winner. But a late entry by a woman derailed the Harris Express.

Harris wrote that Nellie Beck, editor of the Bartow Courier-Informant, was placed on the track through the efforts of two Ocalans who sought his defeat. He named Bittinger of the Star and the Rev. J.C. Porter, publisher of a Sunday School newspaper called the Baptist Witness.Bittinger and Porter, who had helped give birth to the Star, were the two plotters “shielding themselves behind the petticoats of a bright and charming woman,” Harris said. He found no fault with Nellie, instead reserving his vitriol for Bittinger and Porter.Naturally, Harris said, as a gentleman, he was forced to withdraw from the race. No gentleman worthy of the title would pit himself against a charming lady newspaper editor. The issue got murky, however, when Nellie also withdrew from the contest. Even so, Harris said, he was stepping down and out.

Harris had good reason for his suspicions, although Bittinger denied the charges. Bittinger had written that Harris had been hand selected by the Jacksonville newspapers and would win regardless of how the votes of readers actually went.Harris contended the Jacksonville newspapers were sufficiently wealthy to give him a free train trip to the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo without resorting to the expense of a phony contest. He accused Bittinger and Porter of being “envious and puerile.”For his part, Bittinger saw nothing unfair about derailing Harris' candidacy as the most popular editor in Florida. After all, he said, Harris had criticized editors throughout the state for accepting free passes to travel on the railroads. And here he was seeking a free pass all the way to Buffalo and back.

Bittinger said he thought Harris had stepped down “because he saw the handwriting of defeat on the wall.” He wrote in the Star: “Mighty strange that Harris' chivalry was of such a lofty nature it took a week for it to lower itself from the Olympian heights to come to earth and realize he was contesting with a woman when that woman had withdrawn from the contest a week prior to his withdrawal.”Bittinger said he opposed Harris “because of Harris' unmannerly, disreputable and dishonest treatment of the Florida Press Association and its members.” Harris had attacked the editors as “a junketing gang” riding on free passes and enjoying the favors of the railroads and acting as willing and pliant tools of the railroads.

Harris had skipped the last three annual meetings of the Press Association even though he was on the programs for those years. A resolution had been introduced to expel Harris from the association because of his imputing wrong motives to others.To hear Bittinger explain it, the resolution was defeated because he, Bittinger, had argued that Harris had admirable traits and character “though he possessed a peculiar bent of mind at times, for which he was not responsible.” That, of course, only fueled the bitterness between the two Ocala editors, and the sniping would continue in the columns of the two newspapers. It would not end until the death of Bittinger and the retirement of Harris.An avid Marion County historian, David Cook is a retired editor of the Star-Banner. Contact him at 237-2535.